The information: A brand new system for noise-canceling headphones lets customers choose again in to sure sounds they’d like to listen to, resembling infants crying, birds tweeting, or alarms ringing. 

The way it works: The system, which continues to be in prototype, connects off-the-shelf headphones to a smartphone app. The microphones embedded in these headphones, that are used to cancel out noise, additionally detect the sounds on this planet across the wearer. These sounds are then performed again to a neural community, which has been educated to acknowledge 20 on a regular basis noises; then sure sounds are boosted or suppressed in actual time, relying on the consumer’s preferences. 

Why it issues: Researchers have lengthy tried to unravel the “cocktail occasion drawback”—that’s, to get a pc to concentrate on a single voice in a crowded room, as people are in a position to do. Specialists say this new methodology is a big step ahead, and will pave the best way for smarter listening to aids and earphones. Learn the total story.

—Rhiannon Williams

I attempted lab-grown hen at a Michelin-starred restaurant

Final week, our local weather reporter Casey Crownhart paid a go to to Bar Crenn, a Michelin-starred spot and one in all two eating places within the US at the moment serving up lab-grown meat. She was served a one-ounce sampling of cultivated hen, made within the lab by startup Upside Meals, coated with a recado negro tempura crust, and topped with edible flowers and leaves. 

Cultivated meat, additionally known as cultured or lab-grown meat, is meat made utilizing animal cells—however not animals themselves. It’s a rising enterprise. However does it actually style like hen? Learn Casey’s full overview.